Regulators Clear Microsoft Deal for Great Plains

Less than two months after Microsoft announced its plans to buy mid- market accounting software giant Great Plains, the two companies received a green light from antitrust regulators at the Federal Trade Commission. Great Plains issued a statement that the FTC said “the waiting period under the H...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Feb. 21, 2001

Web Analytics’s Dirty Little Secrets

During the sales process, Web-analytics suppliers rarely mention some common problems and pitfalls, according to Guy Creese, an analyst with The Aberdeen Group. Here are some of them: Data collection perfection is unattainable. The Internet was not designed with auditing of end-user behavior in m...

By John Xenakis • Feb. 21, 2001

Explore the Trendline➔

The CFO Strategy for Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence’s impact on the office of the CFO continues to evolve, and finance chiefs must be aware of the opportunities it will create for growth. 

By CFO.com staff

Xenakis on Technology: Web Analytics Can Improve Your Marketing

Perhaps one of the best business innovations brought on by the Internet is its ability to provide nearly instantaneous feedback on marketing campaigns. For example, once a campaign is launched, a company can measure the impact on its Web site by doing further research on the products being market...

By John Xenakis • Feb. 21, 2001

E-commerce Partners Line up New Clients

CommerceOne and SAP Move Forward CommerceOne and SAPMarkets say they’ve lined up four joint customers, building upon a marketing agreement the two companies formed last June. The new customers include IBS, a Russian systems integrator; IwayTrade, an E-commerce software supplier in Portugal; Swiss...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Feb. 21, 2001

Building Boom in Web Data Centers

And Now There Are 10Web hoster Exodus Communications opened its tenth Silicon Valley data center. But the company isn’t going to sit around and let itself get sandbagged by the California electricity crisis. It built an electrical substation to serve the facility and other data centers it has pla...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Feb. 20, 2001

FreeMarkets Blends an ASP with B2B

Do it Yourself B2BB2B exchange provider, FreeMarkets Inc. is letting customers build their own exchanges. On Thursday, the company unveiled QuickSource, a service that lets businesses build and operate E-marketplaces. According to Cnet News, the service is a change of pace for Pittsburgh- based F...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Feb. 16, 2001

Staples Gets Supercomputing Supplies from IBM

Yeah, We Got ThatIBM says office supplies discounter Staples Inc. has purchased one of Big Blue’s SP supercomputer for its enterprise data warehouse. The computer will integrate Staples’ merchandising information and help it identify emerging retail trends. The $9 billion retailer says it is enla...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Feb. 15, 2001

Will Microsoft Still Buy Great Plains?

While Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department is reviewing Microsoft’s pending acquisition of Great Plains Software, the deal does not seem to be in jeopardy. The same story also reported that Justice is investigating Microsoft’s $135 million investment in software de...

By Joseph Radigan • Feb. 14, 2001

Xenakis on Technology: Online Games for Girls: E-commerce’s Next Frontier?

Surprise! More females than males play online games. Just a few years ago, computer games were considered a no-woman’s-land. Not anymore. However, men and women tend to play different games and use different styles of play, which raises the question whether existing E-commerce Web sites are set u...

By John Xenakis • Feb. 14, 2001

Hewlett-Packard Weaves a Web

HP Jumps into Web Services FrayMicrosoft did it. So did Oracle. The Sun Microsystems did, too. Now you can add Hewlett-Packard to the list. So what’s “it” all about? Web services. HP became the latest high profile tech supplier to announce software to support corporate clients’ Web services. To s...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Feb. 14, 2001

SAP is Now an ASP

Let’s Try Data CentersGerman software giant SAP wants more of the application-hosting market, and on Monday, it struck up deals with Hewlett-Packard and Electronic Data Systems to get it. SAP named the two companies as preferred data center providers. Cnet News reported that the overall ASP marke...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Feb. 13, 2001

Industry Vet Hired to Revive Infinium

New Top Gun at InfiniumOn Friday, Infinium hired James McGowan as president and CEO, effective immediately. The company’s founder, Robert Pemberton, is continuing as chairman. Prior to joining Infinium, McGowan was president and CEO of Portal Connect, which was formerly called EIS Systems, a prov...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Feb. 12, 2001

Shakeup at J.D. Edwards

J.D. Edwards hasn’t had an easy time selling its OneWorld XE software, the latest version of its flagship enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The sales problems forced the company to announce this week that it expects to report a loss of $0.01 or $0.02 per share for the first quarter of fi...

By Joseph Radigan • Feb. 9, 2001

Another Day, Another Merger

Let’s Be ExactMacola Software announced this week that it is being acquired by Exact Holding, a Dutch developer of accounting, logistics, and payroll software that has been looking to expand its share of the U.S. market. The companies did not disclose the deal’s terms. The users of Macola’s flags...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Feb. 9, 2001

E-commerce Ups and Downs

Dell Says “Bye Bye B2B”Dell Computer shut down one of its B2B online marketplaces, called Dell Marketplace, only four months after it originally opened, according to Ecommerce Times.com. The B2B exchange allowed customers to purchase Dell personal computers, notebooks, servers, and related inform...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Feb. 8, 2001

Healthcare E-business Heats Up

PeopleSoft Introduces Healthcare ASPPeopleSoft Inc. and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young introduced HealtheValue, a package of E-business healthcare applications, which will be delivered through PeopleSoft’s eCenter Application Service Provider. The software allows healthcare organizations to collect...

By Joseph Radigan • Feb. 7, 2001

Softline Has Big Plans for AccountMate

The growing demands of technology and globalization have made it almost impossible for midrange accounting software vendors to remain independent and viable. A large number of them have gone on the auction block, but in the process new firms have entered the sector.For example, even industry lead...

By John Xenakis • Feb. 7, 2001

Servers Are Solid

Serve it UpMarket research firm Dataquest says a fourth quarter surge in shipments of server computers lifted the server market’s sales totals for all of 2000. In the last three months of 2000, worldwide server shipments totaled 1.1 million units, up 21 percent from the fourth quarter of 1999, ac...

By Joseph Radigan • Feb. 6, 2001

The E-commerce Tax Issue Heats Up

The push for a nationwide policy on E-commerce taxation has been proceeding in fits and starts for years, and it’s still not clear where it will wind up. But Tuesday morning, the drive to simplify state sales and use taxes as they apply to E- commerce will take a big step forward when Sen. Ron Wy...

By Joseph Radigan • Feb. 6, 2001

Deals for Dealers

IBM’s Test DriveIBM is expanding its automotive B2B service, IBMPlaces.ihost.com, to let auto dealers lease software over the Internet. Initially, the service will target 22,000 U.S. dealers. After the program is launched domestically, it will be extended to another 28,000 dealers overseas. IBM a...

By Joseph Radigan • Feb. 5, 2001

IBM Disk Drive Breaks Speed Limit

High-Speed DrivingIBM unveiled a hard disk drive for servers with a speed that rivals the 15,000 revolutions per minute of a drive made by Seagate Technology. But, according to a Reuters report, IBM’s drive is actually faster than Seagate’s in retrieving information. Seagate and IBM are the two l...

By Joseph Radigan • Feb. 2, 2001

Accounting Software: It’s a Buyer’s Market

Survivor. That was the watchword for most of the high-end accounting software vendors during the year 2000. No, they weren’t glued to their television sets all summer long watching people shamelessly pursue a million-dollar payday. They were coping with the post-Y2K industry slowdown, repositioni...

By Theresa W. Carey • Feb. 1, 2001

Surf Report: Monitoring Office Web Use

If you believe the hysteria, every employee’s mouse click should be suspect these days. In a recent Vault.com survey, more than 50 percent of employees admitted to receiving personal E-mails and surfing non-work-related sites at work on a daily basis. Online trading, shopping, and porn sites repo...

By Alix Stuart • Feb. 1, 2001

Getting the 411 on Telecom Costs

CFOs, telecom managers, and others forced to confront the nightmare of corporate phone bills can be forgiven for believing that the number of cell phones is rivaled only by the number of rate plans. Even before cell phones came along, telecom costs were a big-ticket item: so big, in fact, that do...

By Scott Leibs • Feb. 1, 2001

Outsourcing: Talent on Tap

On March 27 last year, hundreds of IT experts and administrators logged on to their computers as employees of Japan’s Sumitomo Metal Industries, or SMI, one of the world’s top producers of steel products. By the time they logged off at the end of the week, they were no longer working for SMI.They...

By Adam Lincoln • Feb. 1, 2001